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Six Issues in Which IS and CSCW Research Communities Differ

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COOP 2016: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 23-27 May 2016, Trento, Italy

Abstract

Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) has become increasingly positioned as a subfield of human-computer interaction (HCI). Earlier, CSCW has had a closer connection to the Information Systems (IS) field, but this relationship has seemed to become more distant. In this paper we reflect on the distinct characteristics of the research communities of CSCW and IS. We identify similarities, but also stark differences between the two. The six identified issues of difference are the roles of theory, context, methodology, organizational layer, socio-technicality, and power-alignment. Our contribution is in making these differences visible. We hope this paper will promote diplomacy and understanding between these research communities, so that scholars may consider cross-disciplinary IS-CSCW publication strategies.

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Acknowledgements

This article is a result of mutual cooperation in which both authors have contributed equally. We want to thank the participants and organizers of the EUSSET summer school for all the inspiring discussions, and the reviewers and editor for their valuable comments.

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  1. INTERACT Research Unit, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Arto Lanamäki & Karin Väyrynen

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  1. Arto Lanamäki
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  2. Karin Väyrynen
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Correspondence to Arto Lanamäki .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. InterAction Laboratory Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Antonella De Angeli

  2. LERO Department of Computer Science & Information Systems, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Liam Bannon

  3. Department of Communication Science, University of Siena, Siena, Italy

    Patrizia Marti

  4. Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Silvia Bordin

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Lanamäki, A., Väyrynen, K. (2016). Six Issues in Which IS and CSCW Research Communities Differ. In: De Angeli, A., Bannon, L., Marti, P., Bordin, S. (eds) COOP 2016: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 23-27 May 2016, Trento, Italy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33464-6_1

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